KAZUSHI ONO CONDUCTS MAHLER’S TITAN SYMPHONY

A pianist who has performed in public for sixty-five years (his debut performance at the age of 15 being Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20), Joaquín Achúcarro continues to delight audiences everywhere. He returns with the OBC and his favourite composer, Mozart, and the composer’s most popular, and also his most mature work. Mahler said that, as far as he was concerned, composing a symphony was like creating a world. So he created a new world, the first of which, the Titan Symphony, epitomised what he wanted to express: a spectacular orchestra, a ‘titanic’ structure, the dominance of the orchestration which carries the audience from highly poignant moments through to the dramatic force produced by symphonic language. The most important thing of all was the need for expression: “Emotions became so powerful in me that they gushed forth like an impetuous torrent!”